Way of the Wong: The Newest Wong

I'm a bit behind, but perhaps I can be forgiven since this past week has been a blur of nighttime feedings and diapers.

We are proud to announce the arrival of Brandon Archer Wong on Sunday, June 10, 2012 at 11:46 am, weighing 9 lbs., 1 oz. and measuring 21.5 inches. (By comparison, Justin was 7 lbs, 7 oz and 21 inches).

Delivery was relatively smooth. I started having contractions on Saturday at lunchtime, but they weren't too painful, just uncomfortable. By dinner time, they were about 8 minutes apart so we decided to have dinner in Santa Clara near the hospital, *just in case*. After dinner, I decided to go in to get checked out. Normally they would have sent me home since I wasn't progressed far enough, but since I told them we lived 35 minutes away, they let me walk around and get rechecked. I was finally admitted that night at 11:30 pm. Jay dropped Justin off at my parents and came to the hospital.

It was a long, uncomfortable (but thankfully not painful) night. I got my epidural at 4 am (THANK YOU to my Nurse Anesthetist!). It wasn't until 11 am on Sunday that I could finally start pushing. Luckily my OB happened to be on duty that day and was able to deliver Brandon. It seemed to be a party up in that room as she was making jokes with Jay. (Let me tell you, it's HARD to push when you're laughing). She even let Jay gown up to help deliver Brandon. At least one of us was having fun. My labor nurse was busy taking pictures ("Tasteful" she swore) of the scene. I'll spare you most of them ;) Brandon was born at 11:46 am after about 30 minutes of pushing. At 9 lbs., 1 oz. he was declared the biggest baby of the day (lucky me)

Lots of people have been asking us about Brandon's name. As with Justin, Jay and I had THE hardest time coming up with a proper boy's name. For a long time, I was rallying for another "J" name to match with Jay and Justin, but we couldn't agree on another one that we both liked. So then we moved to "A" names to match me, but no luck there. Then we started thinking about Brandon, since Brandon Lee was Bruce Lee's son. I guess it's a Chinese American thing :) Archer came about at truly the last minute after we had delivered him and were talking in the hospital. Jay was surfing names on his phone and came across Archer and we both liked it since it started with A and was a little bit different. *Whew*

We came home last Monday afternoon and are still trying to settle in to some kind of routine between Brandon's feeding every two hours and trying to get Justin off to preschool in the mornings. Brandon had a bit of jaundice and ended up also being "tongue-tied" (where the skin under your tongue is attached too far forward). We had to get it clipped (sounds much worse that it is) so that he could nurse more efficiently. Luckily all is well by now. Jaundice is on the decline and the little monster has climbed back up to his fighting weight after losing a pound after delivery.

Justin seems to have adjusted well enough. He's full of questions about what Brandon is doing. He seems to be testing his limits with us though, but I suppose that's to be expected.

I'm really hoping that Brandon is as good as Justin was at sleeping through the night by 6 weeks. I'd really forgotten how miserable it is to function on fragmented sleep. But at the least, we know generally what to expect this time around. We're not as scared to handle a newborn this time ;)

So Week One is in the books. It's hard to believe he's only been around such a short time - we're trying to absorb and enjoy every moment (well maybe not the explosive diapers...that we can move on from...)